Six Sigma Tutorials -> Balancing Your Legal Scorecard - Part 2   by Richard Hall

The Balanced Scorecard Perspectives -The Organizational Perspective

One of the key drivers for an organizations success, except in a few rare cases, is organizational efficiency and cost effectiveness. As such, how an organization performs from a bottom line point of view is clearly a top priority for management.

With that in mind, all organizations have their marquee departments, the ones that deliver the maximum contribution to the specific type of financial measure that matters most to them. All organizations also have their average departments and the departments that cost them lots of money, but that they just can't operate without (many times the legal department, which is seen as a drain on the bottom line).

To maximize financial return, it is the operational efficiency and cost effectiveness of the 'marquee' department that should be addressed. Departmental measures that reflect the issues that really matter to the organization need to be developed. From these, the key objectives and measures for how the other departments (such as legal) should operate can be established.

In this way an even more powerful link can be established between organizational focused objectives and improved financial performance.